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iPhone photos app curation

So after updating to iOS 13 on my phone, I noticed that photos has a feature where it curates your photos. On the photos tab, if you scroll all the way down it will give you the status.

so I’ve installed iOS 13 on launch on my xs max. And it’s still stuck on curating. The progress bar is almost complete. And it hasn’t finished.

I got an iPhone 11 pro three days ago and signed on to the same Apple ID and it’s stuck as well. My iPad Pro had oddly completed and on the photos tab it says citations complete.

all three devices signed into the same Apple ID. Has been connected to wifi and power.

Any one having this issue as well ?

iPhone XS

Posted on Sep 25, 2019 6:15 AM

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léonie

Level 10

200,531 points

Posted on Sep 25, 2019 8:18 AM

iCloud might be interfering, if you are using iCloud Photos on your devices with "Optimize Storage". I noticed that the scanning of the library for face recognition and object recognition takes much longer, if the photos are not stored locally on my iPhone or iPad. After I disabled "Optimize Storage" the scan finished much faster. The curating requires the previous face detection and object recognition. Can you afford to have all photos and videos stored locally on your devices?

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77 replies

Dec 15, 2019 3:26 PM in response to léonie

I have over 11000 photos on my external hard drive.How long do you think it will take?

Dec 19, 2019 3:11 AM in response to aitormagan

Stuck at about 80 percent for over a week

enrightm

Level 1

12 points

Dec 23, 2019 6:24 PM in response to aitormagan

DEAR APPLE, why are you NOT responding to these thousands of posters wondering what the **** is taking so long to access our pictures? I couldn't do a family Christmas card because of this!

Feb 6, 2020 10:30 AM in response to tygs

My Mac is still 'curating' ever since I upgraded the OS in September 2019 and it's now February 2020 - seems excessively long, even if my photos are in cloud storage

tygs Author

Level 1

20 points

Feb 6, 2020 10:45 AM in response to gregory255

Yeah don’t close the lid as it will put everything to sleep. You may want to check your energy savings. And deselect our drives to sleep. But I think it should if it’s being used.

tygs Author

Level 1

20 points

Feb 6, 2020 10:46 AM in response to Scrutchpipe

yeah that’s kind of long. Shouldn’t be normal. Unless if you have that many pictures. Are you using iCloud or just the photos app ?

Sep 25, 2019 9:19 AM in response to léonie

yes, I switched the photos to local as I did not like photos requiring internet.

It was on optimized before.

On my other phone that I do not use I have it still set for optimize photo

while for the new phone its on local

tygs Author

Level 1

20 points

Sep 28, 2019 5:09 PM in response to M13Z

I am glad that i was not the only one who had this "issue"

78000 is a lot of photos, I wouldn't want to try and delete and re-add them on iCloud if i had that many so yes best bet is to wait it out, i think someone already mentioned to me to do this.

Although I did delete and re-add my photos because I am impatient and it did seem to work but really can't say that is a set solution.

And yes I hate the waiting game to especially with curation, you don't have a progress bar so you will never know when it will finish or if there is an error

Oct 10, 2019 3:11 AM in response to tygs

Hi there!

So I got my iPhone 11 Pro 2 days ago and after backing up my old iPhone X, I reset everything on that phone. And so, I restored my new phone from the backup. However, I have noticed that most of my photos won't open. I have around 18000 photos and I can only see photos till 2018 November. And the Photos app has been stuck on "Leave device locked and connected to power" for the longest time ever.

I can see that I have all the photos but they appear as white thumbnails and so even when I click on those photos, it's just entirely white.

Also, I do not save my photos in iCloud. I've always been backing up my phones on my Mac so that's how it's been.

Now, can anyone tell me why I can't see any of my older photos? All those photos are extremely precious to me and since I already reset my old iPhone X, there is no going back.

Oct 10, 2019 5:57 AM in response to anika_1Dforever

Same issue here although my photos are optimized. it took 10-12 days fro the the thumbnails to appear and they appear slowly. in addition if you drill down to a more detailed view, the thumbnail should appear though this is too time consuming. i think there is a bug in ios 13 that makes loading images very slow. 12 days later and photos are still curating..... not normal.

tygs Author

Level 1

20 points

Oct 20, 2019 9:00 AM in response to janfrommentone

Worked for me when I turned off iCloud photos and deleted all my photos and turned it back on.

did it on my first phone and that worked and then tried it again on the second phone that was stuck.

cant say if it will work for everyone. But did for me

Oct 20, 2019 9:35 AM in response to tygs

For me that worked too. The curation process is over. But the faces analysis is still running (it started more than two weeks ago 😂) and ir analyses like 200 photos a day. Taking into account the amount of photos I have, it will have finished by the end of the year 😂😂😂

tygs Author

Level 1

20 points

Dec 15, 2019 7:39 PM in response to Retiredst

hmmm my issue was for iPhone, but the photos app says it has to be locked and connected to power

so I assume that your laptop can't be closed or powered off if it is an iMac,

I assume if you set your energy saving mode to shut off hardisks may effect it as well ?

not sure though

léonie

Level 10

200,531 points

Dec 25, 2019 1:16 AM in response to enrightm

You can use Photos independent of the curating. We do not need to know, if Photos is still "curating" or not. It would be much better if Apple would just hide the irritating message. It will start again anyway, as soon as we import new photos, favorite some photos, crop photos, or do anything else that might change the curated layout.

tygs Author

Level 1

20 points

Sep 28, 2019 7:02 AM in response to aitormagan

Nono I had the photos turned off on OS X long before.

I just deleted the photos on my old phone after signing out of iCloud

yes the new phone is still going so I’ll let you know.

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iPhone photos app curation